Question 1

How many slaves died in the transatlantic slave trade?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

About 1.8 million of the roughly 12.5 million Africans forced onto slave ships died during the Middle Passage — around 15 per cent never reached land alive. Historians estimate a comparable or larger number died earlier, during the raids, forced marches to the coast and confinement in barracoons, which pushes deaths directly caused by the trade itself to roughly 4 to 6 million.

Question 2

How many slaves died in the Middle Passage?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

Roughly 1.8 million people. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database records 12.5 million embarked and about 10.7 million disembarked between 1501 and 1866. Mortality averaged around 15 per cent per voyage, and was far higher on longer or disease-struck crossings.

Question 3

How many slaves died in America?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

There is no single verified figure, because deaths of enslaved people in the United States were not systematically recorded as such. What the records do show is extreme mortality: infant mortality among the enslaved was roughly double that of white Americans, and life expectancy at birth was in the low-to-mid 20s in the antebellum period. Roughly 388,000 Africans were landed in mainland North America; by 1860 the enslaved population was about 3.95 million, so the great majority of enslaved people who died in America were born there.

Question 4

How many Africans were taken in the slave trade in total?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

About 12.5 million were embarked on transatlantic voyages, of whom roughly 10.7 million survived to be landed. A further estimated 6 million or more were trafficked across the Sahara, Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trades over a longer period.

Question 5

Why do death-toll estimates for slavery differ so much?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

Because they measure different things. Ship manifests give a comparatively firm figure for the Middle Passage. Deaths in the interior wars, raids and marches were never recorded by anyone with an interest in recording them, so those are modelled estimates. Deaths from overwork, punishment and disease on plantations are counted in some estimates and excluded from others.

Question 6

Was the Middle Passage the deadliest part of the slave trade?

Unsilenced · Accepted Answer

Not necessarily. Most historians of the trade, including Joseph Miller and Patrick Manning, argue that mortality in the African interior — during capture, the march to the coast and detention before embarkation — equalled or exceeded deaths at sea.

Period	Embarked	Landed	Died at sea
1501–1600	277,500	241,300	~36,000
1601–1700	1,875,600	1,566,900	~309,000
1701–1800	6,494,600	5,609,900	~885,000
1801–1866	3,873,600	3,338,400	~535,000
Total	12,521,300	10,756,500	~1,765,000

Region of arrival	People landed	Share
Brazil	~4,864,000	45%
British Caribbean	~2,318,000	22%
French Caribbean	~1,120,000	10%
Spanish Americas	~1,293,000	12%
Dutch Americas	~445,000	4%
Mainland North America / United States	~389,000	4%

How Many Slaves Died?

How many enslaved people died in the Atlantic slave trade?

The Atlantic crossing, century by century

Where the 10.7 million who survived were landed

Why the number is contested

Sources & Further Reading